Empathy |
Working Definition:
Identification with another's situation, feelings, and motives, felt and understood AS IF one were taking part in the experience of that person instead of your habitual or imagined reaction to it.
“the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person—to experience events and emotions (e.g., joy and sadness) the way that person experiences them” (Aronson, et. al., 1999, 424, 490).
Disciplinary Definitions:
In Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice, Martin L. Hoffman defines empathy in the following way:
Empathy has been defined by psychologists in two ways: (a) empathey is the cognitive awareness of another person's internal sates, that is, his thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and intentions . . .; (b) empahty is the vicarious affective response to another person. This book deals with the second type: affective emphathy . . . one feels what the other feels. . . . The key requirement of an empathetic response accordingy to my definition is the involvement of the psychological processes that make a person have feelings that are more congruent with another's situation than with his own situation. (29-30)
See Dilthey on "Einfüling."
”To convey the nature of understanding, Dilthey employed
terms such as "transposition," "projection," and "resubjectification," which
connote a process of empathic identification. The German terms (Gleichsetzen, Sichhineinversetzen, Sich-ubertragen) suggest the adoption of the life-position or world-view of another .
. .“ (Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey , 1981, 250)
See also Rom Harré and Roger Lamb, The Dictionary of Developmental and Educational Psychology, 87.
Comments:empathetic effect: the emotional aspects of an experience are transferred as well as the sensations creating the conditions that enable the recognition of an identification with another person's feelings.
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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